Ecotourism – Responsible and Sustainable Tourism
Eco-tourism
Responsible tourism means all tourism straight determined by the use of natural living e.g. landscape and wildlife. Nature-based tourism includes eco tourism and mass tourism. Uncontrolled mass tourism will continue to help the wreckage of cultural and natural significance (commercialization of Culture) therefore leading or causing loss of cultural and biological biodiversity, and vital sources of revenue. Nature-based tourism provides a method of financing special ecosystems preservation. This offers an opportunity for the community living near the protected places to help economically e.g. employment opportunity. But Nature based travel and tourism while sustaining eco system also degrades them. Much nature-based tourism falls short of social responsibility to the nearby community.
Sustainable tourism is actually designed and managed in such a manner that all tourism pursuits will concentrate on a heritage resource, natural and cultural which may be continued imminently and every attempt is created to keep the resource to perpetuity.
Eco-tourism embraces 4 basic elements:-
• The natural surroundings as the main attraction and the cultural atmosphere playing a secondary job
• Focus on education and also the interpretation of the resource
• Provision of the advantage to the host community
Tourism needs an unspoilt environment in which to operate. It is crucial that tour operation must be developed and handled in such a manner that doesn’t harm the natural assets. We subscribe to the point that the extent to which tourism is produced, planned and managed in an organized and coordinated way will have an effect on the long-term quality of the tourism product and consequently the good results of the hospitality Industry. While tourism is often a catalyst for development, it is essential for the government agencies to plan and develop tourism carefully so that the benefit may be optimized without creating environmental and social problems.
Lower impact forms of tourism counteract the consequences of mass tourism which poses a variety of issues on the source base i.e. environment, society, and economy. Lower impact forms of tourism build a balance between setting quality and resource utilization. This is primarily targeted at empowering local communities in dealing with their natural energy which is actually producing an incentive to save the biological resource in the earth by enabling the beneficial effects from tourism filter down to the individual families and households.
Alternative tourism is actually seen as forms of tourism which are actually in line with natural community and community values and which enables both the guest as well as the host to have worthwhile and positive interaction and shared experience.
It is now fashionable to look at tourism growth in the context of “sustainability” “alternative tourism” “green tourism” many of which contain a certain meaning to different people but a vast majority of these are simply eco-labels and marketing slogans. Sustainable tourism is actually that which meets the requirements of the present without compromising the ability of generations to meet their own needs.